I have planend this thread for quite a while, but had hoped to finish my opera countdown first. Now since that thread is on a break until we get to the new boards and since May is approaching I'm starting this thread. I don't know how many of you who are aware of the ESC (Eurovision Song Contest) so first to lay down the basics. "Eurovision Song Contest (French: Concours Eurovision de la Chanson) is an annual competition held among active member countries of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television and then casts votes for the other countries' songs to determine the most popular song in the competition. The Contest has been broadcast every year since its inauguration in 1956 and is one of the longest-running television programmes in the world. It is also one of the most watched non-sporting events in the world, with audience figures having been quoted in recent years as anything between 100 million and 600 million internationally." The music that's been performed has, almost, never been considered modern. The songs are supposed to appeal to a large audience and the lyrics tend to be quite bland. One music researcher sat down and made a list of the most common words used in the lyrics and came up with the ideal ESC song "be nice to nice people". Still there are exceptions to this. In this thread I'm going to count down from the first ESC held in 1956 until today. 1956 Location: Lugano, Switzerland Participating countries: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland Winnder: Lys Assia, "Refrain" Switzerland The first ESC held was a try to reach out over the borders in Europe. It started out more as a radio event though, so the only surviving live pictures are of the winner. Lys Assia's Refrain This first event also had some irregularities like each participating country sending two songs, the Swiss jury being allowed to vote for Luxembourg as well, and the results, except for the winner, have never been revealed. The winning song is quite a standard, harmless song accompanied by a big band.
*peeks in* Am I allowed to post here? I don't want to ruin your countdown.... Nice idea to teach us something about the history of the contest. Hard to believe there were only 7 countries participating back then. Once you are done with the countdown, are you going to list how many times and when which countries have won? I think that would be interesting to know as well. Was the rule that you're not allowed to vote for your own country already in place in 1956? Really curious about this year's results.
I'm German and I do, usually with some friends. And we cheer for our country, even if we hate our song. xD
Everyone is encouraged to post, and I would be happy if people would like to add comments and memorable songs or other favorites from the different years. And you could vote for your own country in the beginning. Up until 1974 there were quite a lot of different voting systems tested, so I'm not going through the voting procedures until then.
Last good act to win was Lordi. I've been off it somewhat since Terry Wogan stopped doing commentary here, he like most got fed up with the strategic political block voting most countries employ now. Why we've entered 100 year old Engelbert Humperdink I don't know, he seems to have made only one known song and how many people in Europe know or care about him? If a band like Blue couldn't win I have little hope in the UK ever managing another win.
1957 Location: Frankfurt am Main, Germany Participating countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, UK, Italy, Austria, Netherlands, Germany, France, Denmark, Switzerland Winner: Corry Brokken "Net als toen", Netherlands The competition was still mostly a radio broadcast, but more people were getting TV-sets so the audience was starting to grow. This year saw the first time that the juries of the different countries phoned in their votes. There was still no time limit for the songs so Italy's song was more than five minutes long. That lead to a change in the rules and from 1958 and onwards there's been a maximum time limit of three minutes for each song. I think that the winning entry sounds more bland than most other songs, so I'm not sure that I would have liked to hear the other songs.
Do you know how they decided on the country to host the next contest back then? *listens to song* Ehmm...different times, different taste in music, I guess.
At first it was decided that it should go around between all the participants, it was after this Dutch win that they started giving the hosting of the final to the winner.
1958 Location: Hilversum, Netherlands Participating countries: Italy, Netherlands, France, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Switzerland Winner: André Claveau "Dors, mon amour", France The UK withdrew from the 1958 contest, meaning that it's the only one to date without a single song in English. There were still 10 countries participating though, since Sweden chose to enter for the first time. The winner was France with André Claveau The big hit of the year was Domenico Modugno with Italy's "Nel blu dipinto di blu" more famously known as "Volare". This song would become the first Eurovision song to actually be a hit, even reaching #1 in the US singles chart. Today it's a real classic, while I wonder if anyone knows the winning entry. Here is the original performance.
1959 Location: Cannes, France Participating countries: France, Denmark, Italy, Monaco, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, UK, Belgium Winner: Teddy Scholten, "Een beetje", Netherlands Netherlands was the first country to win the contest twice. It's been said though that the reason that they won is that France and Italy really didn't want the other one to win, so they made sure to give Netherlands as many points as possible. The UK started collected their runner up placements, so far they've had 15. Overall the entries were quite forgetable this year, none have made a lasting remark. The only reason I know the Swedish one for example is that my dad rewrote it into drinking song a couple of years ago.
Decade sum up of the 1950s The 1950s was the beginning of the ESC, it first had to find its form and transfrom from a radio to a TV event. The music itself consisted of harmless songs sung to a big band. The only hit of the ESC in the 1950s was Italy's "Volare". 1960 Location: London Participating countries: UK, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Austria, Monaco, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France Winner: Jacqueline Boyer "Tom Pillibi", France A new decade, but not actually that much new when it came to the music in the ESC. I think the winning entry sounds more like a nursery song than any kind of hit.Other things of note is that the contest was held in London, Netherlands had won in 1959 but declined to host so soon after their first hosting in 1958. The UK had been the runner up in 1959 so the hosting passed to them instead. Norway entered the ESC, so far the country has won three times but also holds the record of most "null points" and last places (10).
1961 Location: Cannes, France Participating countries: Spain, Monaco, Austria, Finland, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, UK, Italy Winner: Jean-Claude Pascal "Nous les amoureux", Luxembourg This contest was the first to be held on a Saturday, since then all finals have been on Saturdays. Finland, Yugoslavia and Spain joined the ESC crows. All three countries would bring quite their own flavor of music to the contest in the years to come. Still the 1961 winner didn't differ too much from the previous winners. I must say though that in my view out of the first years' winners this is my favorite. It has quite a nice rythm going for it, something to relax to or hear in the background in a bar.
1962 location: Luxembourg/Luxembourg Participating countries: UK, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Austria, Monaco, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France Winner: Isabelle Aubret "Un premier amour", France 1962 saw France win for a third time, the first country to achieve three wins. The song that proved to be the most popular after the contest was the Dutch "Katinka" though. Apparently there was some technical problems when the Netherlands perfomed, so that most viewers in Europe didn't see it at all. It still became a hit in several countries, eventhough it got null points in the contest itself.. The Swedish entry "Sol och vår" (sun and spring) had lyrics that I think would never be appropriate today. For example the refrain goes "when it's springtime and you are 17 you understand so little. And all the girls should be locked up inside, after all it's springtime".
1963 Location: London, UK Participating countries: UK, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Austria, Monaco, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France Winner: Grethe & Jörgen Ingmann, Dansevise, Denmark France should have hosted the 1963 final, but declined so once again the UK and the BBC took care of it. I think the Danish winner is the first one where you can hear hints of different music arrangements, the guitar to me sounds quite blues inspired.This year's winner was also the first for a Scandinavian country, the rest of the Nordic countries didn't do so well though since Finland, Norway and Sweden all managed to get null points and shared the last place. For the first time there was a bit of a voting scandal. The spokesperson for the Norwegian jury bungled up the votes so bad that they had to return to him after all the other results had come in. The second time he gave different points, which also in fact gave Denmark the victory ahead of Switzerland. Monaco managed to give one point to both the UK and Luxembourg, but later on their vote for Luxembourg was discarded. Swedish fact: I think the Swedish entry for 1963 is the most boring that we have ever sent, despite it being one of the most talented Swedish jazz singers in the 20th century that performed it.
Good thread, Obi-Anne. My favourite entry ever were those dudes a few years back who were the Winners of Eurovision.
I really liked them as well. In fact 2005 was a great ESC year, it had all the kinds of good/bad/strange songs that you could wish for in an ESC. I'm looking forward to recapping that year.
1964 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark Participating countries: Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Austria, France, UK, Germany, Monaco, Portugal, Italy, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain Winner: Gigliola Cinquetti, Non ho l'età, Italy The 1964 contest was won by Italy in an overwhelming fashion. The song "Non ho l'età" means I'm not old enough and was song by the 18 year old Gigliola Cinquetti. Her innocence apparently wowed the juries. I personally think it's too sweet, and more boring than the Danish winner from 1963. The 1964 contest also saw a couple of firsts in ESC history. For the first time there was a non-European on stage, the dutch contestant Anneke Grönloh hailed from Indonesia. There was also the first political protest when a man jumped up on stage after the Swiss entry with a sign that sayd "boycott Franco and Salazar", the two dictators of Spain and Portugal. Oh, and something should be said about Portugal. Portugal debuted in 1964 and so far has gone the longest time without managing to win the ESC, in fact not even their top placement is in the top 5. Poor Portugal, they used have company in the bad statistics with Finland, but then Finland won in 2005. Unfortunately a fire at the Danish broadcasters in the 1970's destroyed the videos of the final, but here's the winning entry.
When I moved to England in 2007, I went through a period of slight obsession with the ESC in all its campy, multilingual, pseudo-nationalistic goodness. The UK's entry that year was particularly gag-inducing, but it was fun to root on my adopted home nonetheless. Most of the Eurovision songs that I consider to be somewhat half-decent hail from the 1970s or late 1960s. My favorite winner is probably "L'oiseau et l'enfant" from 1977. But I guess we'll get there later. "Non ho l'età" is nothing special, but at the very least it helped launch Gigliola Cinquetti's career. A similar story to the following year's winner, actually...
